God's Playthings

“Peradventure you will be good to me,” and she laid hold of my hands. “This Knight’s name is Sir Paon de Brambre, and I have never spoken to him all my life, though every day I...

“_Damn_ your _Foreign_ tricks, I’m murdered!” cried the _Englishman_; he fell back on the Seat of the Coach and the Polander Turned and Galloped away up _St. James Street_ and _...

“Let us walk once more in the garden,” she said, and rose and opened a glass door in the alcove that led into a garden that was very prettily lit by coloured lanterns. She took...

Having had some proof of your kindness when I was last at Whitehall, makes me hope now that you will not refuse interceding for me with the King, being I know, though too late,...

Her ladies whispered and sobbed together; there were now so many men and women in the room that she felt the air close and heavy. She implored Sainte-Foy to open the window; the...

Outside the sun, at its full height and strength, blazed at white heat, and a bar of vivid light streamed through the smeared glass and fell in a pool of gold on the dirty floor...

Soft blackness rose up, choking the bright flames, blotting out the shouting people, the dim outline of the buildings swirling round the feet of Frà Girolamo and mounting to his...

She could see a cart outside, a humble, dirty cart with straw in the bottom. A jailer began to call out numbers; the prisoners moved towards the door. She found herself being dr...

“He hath not much fortitude after all,” said Farnese, who had looked on suffering so often that no anguish could move him; his cold eyes had many times rested on men and women f...

“He was my father,” said Monmouth; then he began laughing again, and it had the most doleful sound of anything I have ever heard. I could not grasp what had been said, but my lo...

Condorcet had not heard this conversation which was spoken very low and in the patois of the neighbourhood; he feared, however, that it might be about him, and was therefore rel...

At noontide up came her brother-in-law, and made the endeavour to conclude a peace, but this was beyond his powers, for George Endicott was obdurate and his daughter would not g...

And then, to the memory of both, came the most tragic figure in the tragedy. In the glow of the great fire stood a young man, Philip von Königsmarck, one of a wild and unfortuna...

She felt warmly towards Johan, for she knew that it was he who had turned aside the Prince’s vengeance from Jean le Cros and saved him from the crime of taking the life of a son...

Swiftly and desperately he ran across the lawns and groves, up the winding steps to the terraces before the palace, beating the twilight with his outstretched hands as if it was...

A woman had been confined here for thirty-two years; her husband was a King, her son would be a King, she was by her own birth a Princess and by right Queen of England, a countr...

Frà Girolamo flashed his eyes over the crowd, among whom he could distinguish several of the Compagnacci, adherents of the vanished Medici, and many of the Arrabbiati, his bitte...

He sank into it in his old attitude–his hands on the arms, his head resting against the back; only now his eyes were closed, and the steady sound of the passing army was in his...